Ramiro followed Azelio across the bright ground of the Surveyor’s domain and into the starlit valley. The two plants they were carrying put out a healthy red glow, but that didn’t do much to light the way. It was soon clear that, however well their eyes adjusted, they’d need to use the coherers they’d clipped to their tool belts – sacrificing their distance vision for the sake of surer footing. Ramiro tried to balance the confidence he’d gained in dealing with the soil’s peculiar forces with a suitable level of caution. There was no telling what Azelio would do to him if he stumbled and fell, crushing one of his darlings, even if ‘Esilio pushed me!’ was the honest excuse.

‘Just here.’

Ramiro squatted and placed the pot on the ground, then swung his beam around the site. ‘You already dug twelve holes!’ he observed. ‘And I thought you were messing around with Agata all morning.’

Azelio made a noncommittal sound. Ramiro suddenly felt queasy.

‘My plan is to dig up all these plants at the end of the trial and take them back to the Peerless for my colleagues to analyse,’ Azelio mused. ‘So I guess that’s when I’ll see the transition between cultivated and truly pristine ground. But right now, in Esilio’s terms, we’ve just dug the plants up – so on our terms, we’re about to do that. Backwards.’

Ramiro said, ‘You make it sound as if you’ve been practising time-reversed agronomy all your life.’

‘It’s not that hard to see what’s going on, if you think it through,’ Azelio replied lightly.

‘But you don’t mind following markers like this? Evidence of acts you haven’t performed yet?’

‘It’s a little disconcerting,’ Azelio conceded. ‘But I can’t say that it fills me with claustrophobia to know that I’ll carry out the experimental protocols I always planned to carry out.’

Ramiro didn’t argue; the only thing he’d gain by pressing the point was to raise his own level of disquiet again. ‘Let’s get to work, then.’

Azelio squatted beside one of the plants. ‘The idea is to take it out of the potted soil and brush the roots clean. Pay close attention.’ He leant forward and positioned his hands on either side of the stalk, but then he kept them there, motionless. After a lapse of this, Ramiro said, ‘What are you doing?’

‘I thought it might leap into my hands by itself,’ Azelio explained, deadpan. ‘Dropped in and repotted, Esilio style.’

‘One more joke like that and we’ll be burying more than plants here.’

Azelio took a short stone rod from his tool belt and used it to loosen the soil in the pot. Then he gently extracted the plant and applied a soft brush to the roots.

‘Does it matter if there’s a trace of the old soil clinging on?’ Ramiro asked.